When Grief Meets Jamaica: The Unexpected Therapy of Dancing through My Tears

Travel transforms us in ways we rarely anticipate. When we step outside our comfort zones, something remarkable happens – not just philosophically, but neurologically. The brain forms new pathways, rewiring itself in real-time as we navigate unfamiliar territory.

My journey with travel's healing power began unexpectedly in 1996 when I traveled to Jamaica just eight weeks after losing my mother to breast cancer. We had been extraordinarily close – best friends, creative confidants – and her two-year battle had consumed my life. Though the timing seemed questionable, this trip provided precisely what my grieving process needed most: space.

Back home, I was surrounded by familiar places and people that held countless memories of my mother. These comforts, while necessary, made it nearly impossible to process my grief fully or envision life without her. Jamaica's unfamiliar environment – driving on the opposite side of the road, witnessing different living conditions, experiencing vibrant local culture – forced my brain into new patterns. During an evening service at the dance conference where I was teaching, everything broke open. Kneeling on a hard linoleum floor thousands of miles from home, I finally released the anger and disappointment I'd been harboring. I emptied myself completely and felt a divine reassurance that joy would return to my life.

The science explains why: new experiences activate the brain's reward system, boosting dopamine – the motivation chemical depleted during depression. The Jamaican sunshine certainly helped! Additionally, navigating new challenges activated my prefrontal cortex, helping me consider future possibilities I'd previously been unable to envision. When I returned home, though grief didn't disappear, something had fundamentally shifted. I had a renewed sense of purpose and clarity about moving forward while carrying my mother's memory.

This experience shaped my understanding of travel's healing potential – something I now help others discover through intentional travel coaching. Whether you're navigating grief, transition, or seeking transformation, travel offers unique tools for healing unavailable in familiar environments. Ready to discover how travel can transform your life during challenging seasons? Visit my website and book a free consultation to begin your journey.

Chapters

• 0:00 Travel's transformative potential
• 1:40 Coping with mother's passing
• 5:30 Journey to Jamaica
• 9:15 Finding emotional release abroad
• 14:45 The science behind travel healing
• 19:10 Moving forward after grief
• 21:40 Invitation to travel coaching

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Have you ever returned from a trip and felt different in some way but couldn't quite put a pin on why? Or you've noticed a friend returning from a trip and just noticed the huge transformation in them from their travels, and they just talk about what they experienced and how it changed their lives. And maybe you have or haven't had that experience. But travel can do that. It's not just about checking off places on your bucket list or going to see as many countries as you can or seeing all those famous tourist destinations and iconic places. There is more to travel than meets the eye, and today I'm going to share with you a personal experience of one of my early, early travels that did have a huge transformational impact on my life. Well, welcome to Solo Travel Adventures. I'm Cheryl S, your host. So glad you're here, and if you didn't listen to last week, I encourage you to listen to last week's episode where I talk about travel coaching a little bit of how that focus. You know, taking a trip with some intention really can make your travels just more meaningful, and so my story begins long before I actually knew the power of how travel can transform or heal you, and I had no intention, on this trip specifically to do that, but it was certainly needed. So I'm taking you back to my 20s and this was not a solo trip, but it came at a very unreasonable time. I'll say that.

Speaker 1: 2:01

So this is 1996, and I'm in my 20s and unfortunately my mother passed away from breast cancer the end of September of that year and she had battled that for two years and I was very close to her. We were best friends. She was sort of a mentor to me. She was sort of my creative spark, as we were both creative people. So much love and wisdom from this woman. And I also lived at home, I was one of the last to leave the house and I was not married, of course, and so we were very close. We were close because we were also similar and she knew my heart, she knew my gifts and she battled this for two years and during that two years, although I thought I had grieved and I did go through periods of grieving, it was not over, not near over, and even many, many years later I could attest it was still not over. And if you have lost a loved one, you've ever grieved for someone that you are dearly close to, then you understand that that pain actually never goes away. It does get a little easier and less triggering. But we love to hold on to those beautiful memories we have with that person and even the good and bad right, and look at pictures and remember that person hopefully and usually in a positive light, despite because we've lost them, despite maybe you know the fights you might have with that person in the past. But death definitely gives us a new perspective on life and how we should live.

Speaker 1: 4:07

So here I am, in my 20s. I'm at home living with my parents, and my mother had gotten sick and even her last few months I actually quit my job to sort of help take care of her, because she was just needing more assistance at home and someone to just be around, and of course I knew the end was drawing near, and she also knew that I was given an opportunity to actually teach at a dance conference in Jamaica. Now I had hesitated as to whether to go or not because of course I wanted to be there when my mother passed. I did not want to leave her side, but she really wanted me to go. She knew about the opportunity, knew that it could potentially lead to more things, things that I really had a heart of wanting to do with my dancing. I really had a heart of wanting to do with my dancing and she, even though I told her I wouldn't go, especially if it got closer to the time she really wanted me to go. Well, she did pass, about eight weeks before I was to leave and leaving was a good thing Even though I had thought I had grieved.

Speaker 1: 5:28

There were, as you know, there are many levels of grieving, but they don't always follow a timeline or follow in any kind of order, and we know them as denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, and I fluctuated up and down between many of those. I think. Obviously, in the beginning I had a combination of sort of this denial and rebellion at the same time, and then at the end it did move more into the anger. I was angry that God had taken my mother so soon and that she wasn't healed, and just angry that she wouldn't see me grow up right. She wouldn't see me married. She wouldn't see me with my kids grow up right, she wouldn't see me married, she wouldn't see me with my kids, and so there was a definite loss of a friend as well. And so I was still, even though I feel like I went through some of those. I did some bargaining, you know, with God while she was sick, and I went through many of those phases.

Speaker 1: 6:42

When I arrived in Jamaica, I was unable to anticipate how much I still needed to grieve. So here I am. I'm taking off eight weeks after my mother has passed to a dance conference where I will be actually teaching, and what, oh my gosh, I can't even say. I was in a very good state of mind at that point and it was an opportunity for me to definitely be able to expand my reach for my dance. Now I arrived at the conference via Montego Bay is where I flew into with a friend and met two other friends there. So again, I was not alone. However, I will say this about the friends that I went with they were aware of my mother's passing, very supportive, but the beauty of our friendship was they knew when to give me space and not to ask those typical questions that if you've ever lost somebody that you get asked you know like how are you doing, how are you holding up, and just not sure how to answer those right. And so I was grateful for having friends nearby during this time, because it was so raw, and I'm not saying I'm not recommending that if you do have you lose somebody and you are grieving, that the timing of going on a trip should be right away. I wouldn't recommend it actually, um, but it did work out for me and I'll share that in a moment. But if you are grieving, I believe a trip for the purpose of healing in the, in your situation of grief, is to allow yourself some of that time to process it at home, especially if it was a sudden death.

Speaker 1: 8:51

Now, granted, I had two years basically to sort of grieve my mother's passing. I knew it was coming, especially a year into it. But here I am, in a way. Maybe people thought I was escaping, but it was exactly what I needed, can you imagine? So here I am, two years living with my mother who's dying of cancer, being in the same house with her, being in the same town where I grew up, surrounded by wonderful, beautiful people, neighbors, friends, family, church, community. Everything was so needed and but to have the space to grieve, to be alone, was almost not available if I stayed where I was at Now.

Speaker 1: 9:45

I didn't realize this until I got to Jamaica and we flew into Montego Bay with my friend and we had to drive to Kingston, which is where the conference was held. Now, if you know anything about Jamaica, it is a drive from one side of the island to another and they drive on the opposite side of the road. So here I am, never having driven on the other side of the road or the other side of a car, never having driven on the other side of the road or the other side of a car, that I'm having to learn something new. I'm having to navigate and get out of my comfort zone, obviously because there is some science behind that which I'll get to in a moment. And so here I am, and I'm, you know, just have this freedom to that I that I thrive in and having fun. And so we were winding through these narrow streets of from Montego Bay to Kingston and also coming across, you know, some of the roads were very narrow, they were a single lane in some places, or dirt roads, not a whole lot of paved roads in some sections, and, of course, coming across some hut or kind of shack type villages along the way. And so just some realization of how blessed I am and in my situation, despite my loss, and how joyous and happy everybody that we came across that lives in Jamaica. They have this vibrancy for life and for family. So that was one thing I did sort of take away from that.

Speaker 1: 11:25

But I, you know, I go through this conference, I'm trying to teach and you know I was not in a very good mental space, honestly, to, uh, to teach. I may have been physically there, but mentally and emotionally I was very sapped. And to teach a conference of that magnitude, of that magnitude I felt disappointed in myself. But I believe that God brought me there for other reasons. And so towards the end of one of the evenings now this was a Christian dance conference, so in the evenings they would have church services, and so everybody was, you know, church services, and so everybody was, you know, we had some performances with some dancing and singing and all that stuff.

Speaker 1: 12:19

And one of the last nights a specific song kind of just broke through my heart and the perception of holding it all together had been broken and I was brought to my knees on this hard linoleum floor and the tears kept coming. I didn't think I had any more tears to give. Nelt there confessed and relinquished my anger. As I said, I was kind of hovering between anger and rebellion. At this point, you know to God, and he already knew, and I emptied all my disappointments bare on the floor. I'm not sure how I would move on and what my future look like. To be honest, because, honestly, my mother kind of held me together I hate to say that I was rather reliant on her. But, you know, god comfort me in that moment and I felt a reassurance that everything was going to be okay and what that did help set the stage for my future. And I just knew that if I clung to God, that it would be all right. And I knew that one day I would emerge out of this grief and my prayer when I knelt there was to eventually reclaim joy in my life, which I have. So.

Speaker 1: 13:44

But what happened there really opened my eyes to how, moving out of a place of familiarity so for me, I had been in the house with my mother, the house I grew up in, the city, I grew up in the neighborhood the family, the church, community I had grown up with, and it was all so familiar and it did not allow me, it did not force me, I should say, to continue to process in a high level what was really happening and how to move on, because there were so many memories that were linked to that house, linked to that city, linked to my mother, that it made it really hard for me to think outside that, to move forward and think that there was a different future for me. And so there is some science behind. When you go to a new place, you experience new things, you do new activities, like for me, you know, travel, traveling outside of my comfort zone, traveling to another country where the culture is very different, traveling and driving on the other side of the road, doing things that were different and that made me kind of it's called it's rewiring your brain and it's called neuroplasticity and maybe you have heard of it. It has become pretty big in the health industry as to ways to do that. One specific thing that new experiences in the science says activates the brain's reward system is in the science says activates the brain's reward system, especially the ventral tegmental area, the VTA. What it does is it boosts dopamine and that's the motivation. Chemical Now, I didn't quite share, but also during this period with my mother's death, I was experiencing depression and so of course my dopamine and serotonin was likely very low at this point.

Speaker 1: 15:59

So, moving out of that conversation, doing something new, also, I will have to say, going somewhere where the sun was shining in November, end of November timeframe was also helpful for my depression. The other thing that doing some new things increases and activates the prefrontal cortex. Okay, so the prefrontal cortex is involved in decision making, planning and problem solving. So there I was, having to sort of problem solve a new, a new thing, driving on the other side of the road reminding myself to stay left, stay left, you know, and learning new things there about the culture. And so when we do new things, it does rewire the brain, and there's science behind how travel can provide and improve these um possibilities of either transformation, healing, um, changing you from, I'd say, from the inside out, from the brain outward, and, you know, also affecting your physical, physicalness, your your with the dopamine and even the serotonin, we know how that can also just stimulate you from a physical standpoint, not just mentally and emotionally, of course.

Speaker 1: 17:30

So, despite not having any idea at that point in my life, how travel could, you know, move my needle forward in my healing process, how it could give me tools or present me opportunities to do some healing while I was on that trip. And so I know, when I came back I mean, as if you've lost somebody, the grieving doesn't end after they're buried, the grieving doesn't end after a year but that release that happened when I was in Jamaica, that opportunity to just soak up and stay there and not not be bothered, I felt like I was in my own little bubble actually, and I was so in the moment. Um, with those those river of tears, so to speak. I came home and there was definitely a new, a renewed sort of sense of purpose for me. I knew that I could move on. I knew that there was a future and that I had given up, uh, essentially a little bit of that while my mom was sick. While she was sick, I actually got accepted to graduate school but declined going. I was supposed to go to George Mason University and decided not to go because my mother was still sick and we were unsure of whether she would be totally healed or go into remission with her breast cancer. So I had put that on pause. So when I came back, I knew that was something I needed to pursue and it was clear that I had a future and I needed to move on. And so that trip. Jamaica really gave me that space and I was actually very grateful. I had friends there that understood my situation and so I wasn't alone.

Speaker 1: 19:31

Yes, there are some definite perks to doing some solo travel when you're utilizing it intentionally for, maybe, healing or transformation, but sometimes having that support system may be necessary.

Speaker 1: 19:49

So that's my story and I am sure if you've ever experienced grief or a loss and maybe you haven't chosen or haven't chosen to use travel to help you in that season or that process, I can walk you through with my one-on-one coaching program on how to intentionally build a plan for a travel, a trip, to create that space, to give you that opportunity and to use it as sort of like in a toolbox.

Speaker 1: 20:29

Another little thing that you could utilize in your healing journey and, as I recommended, maybe give yourself some space after an incident has happened to really process in your homeland, and then processing in a new environment will create these new, as it says, these brain synapses. This changing, this rewiring your brain can happen on your next journey to healing. So I encourage you, if this sounds like something you are needing, go to my website, cherylbeckeschcom, and go to work with me and book a call. So this is a free 15 minute call and we will talk and talk about what your needs are, and my dream is to help you in that process so that you can find healing, just as I did, even though I wasn't intentionally aware of it at the time. At the time, travel has those, that power to do so many things in changing people in so many ways, and I want that for you. So, sister travelers, get out there, have that adventure and book that call with me If this is something you want to see in your life a transformation.